Did anyone catch the episode on the Discovery channel, about the IT boom in india?

It basically layed out what is happening due to outsourcing to that country. They had a small piece on a 3D company that takes indians who have never even seen a computer before and trains them in 3D programs (looked like Maya!) for a total of 6 months--and then finds them jobs in the field.

Signal to Noise

06-03-2004, 10:21 PM

Cool! I'm moving to India!

Bollywood here I come!!!:D

DJinNY

06-03-2004, 10:25 PM

LOL, I think you actually have to be indian to get the training. Besides, there are a billion people in india,and a lot of them are trying to get into these schools.

Signal to Noise

06-03-2004, 11:39 PM

I went on a business trip to India (New Delhi) last year. It's a beautiful country, a land of many contrasts, and the people are very friendly.

I work for a global engineering firm and they outsource to India (thus my business trip) for the obvious reasons. This whole outsourcing scheme may seem like it sucks for those here in North America because of job security and the like. But it is good for India and other third world countries. They should have a piece of the proverbial pie. And although things can be done cheaper (which shouldn't be the case as far as I'm concerned- that's called exploitation in my book) and quality is still- arguably- good things will turn around soon. Service costs, local wages, taxes to multinational corporations, etc. will inevitably rise and the prospects of going overseas with work won't be as attractive any more.

Yes, there is over 1 billion people in India. But of that 1 billion only 10% are literate and schooled to a certain extent. Because of their religions and Caste systems only a small percentage have a chance of furthering their education beyond the elementary level. Compared to here 10% is still a lot of people though!;)

Overall, I'm not worried about the outsourcing situation and wish all the best to India and others who have chance to 'better' their living conditions.

wacom

06-04-2004, 12:48 AM

Originally posted by Signal to Noise

Overall, I'm not worried about the outsourcing situation and wish all the best to India and others who have chance to 'better' their living conditions.

So this is just a case of the rich getting richer and the poor...well you can't be much worse off then being poor in india.

I mean if only 10% get any real training and have a chance in life I can only see the divide growing wider.

Give the US a few hundred years on its current coarse and those jobs will return, but the only chage will be that Pixar will be based in india...and is looking for cheap talent over here...LOL.

rogerrs

06-04-2004, 01:59 AM

Originally posted by wacom
So this is just a case of the rich getting richer and the poor...well you can't be much worse off then being poor in india.

I mean if only 10% get any real training and have a chance in life I can only see the divide growing wider.

Give the US a few hundred years on its current coarse and those jobs will return, but the only chage will be that Pixar will be based in india...and is looking for cheap talent over here...LOL.

Actually I think this is very good for India. Every year 800 000 engineers are graduated from indian schools, and I believe the outsourcing to India will give even more people the chance to get an education.

At the moment western companies employ 170000 people in India, estimated to increase to 1,1 million by 2008, so maybe you'll be right Wacom, only sooner than you think! ;)

DJinNY

06-04-2004, 02:45 AM

Lets not forget here folks--America is not the only country that uses India for its outsourcing needs! BUt, John kerry is promising that any company that does use overseas outsourcing and takes away jobs from americans--will lose goverment funding and the ever precious tax breaks that they rely on! I think that is a very important step toward securing employment in this country--which may just earn him my vote this november.

gatz

06-04-2004, 12:29 PM

This subject just bends my polys. I don't begrudge India, Korea or China for doing anything to establish a middle class. It's the rank hypocrisy of the studios outsourcing the work that burns me.

For an industry that is fed by creative energies, how did we get to the point where the creative participants in the endeavor became so devalued. Working contract to contract, under punitive work-for-hire terms, we are expected to offer our creative energies as a commodity, where, now the management system can broker our work like so many interchangeable chess pieces. One of the great lies of artist employment is "salary dependent on experience," read "the best that will settle for what we are offering." How long did it take administration to realize they could to get artists to feed on themselves and present the savings as effective management. Which of course justified the fact that managing was always exulted over the doing.

How many stories did you read in the nineties about telecommuting... and how many jobs did you personally see that offered it? I specifically remember an article from an East-coast studio that extolled the virtues of remote work on Hollywood production. They claimed email, ftp and broadband connections made their studio indistinguishable from west coast studios. But a quick trip to their website joblisting... wait for it... "on site work only." I realize that there are valid "security" reasons for requiring on site employment. but if your employees are as resourceful as you want them to be, or as dishonest as you expect them to be, "on-site" isn't necessarily going to be more secure. From my experience "butts in the seats" is more a management need to maintain the image of a fiefdom than any real logistical demand. Remote management is fine, great, cheap. Remote artists are problematic.

The birds are just coming home to roost. If your only point of competition is price you will loose. Take a look at the the CG news and you'll see the management systems remaining intact, only the hands on the mice are changing. Which of course applies even more pressure on the wages that haven't relocated. And still film budgets skyrocket. I half suspect that these "savings" simply offer more padding for management's poor decisions.

Is it any wonder that so many artists, boutique studios and the like are desperately trying to brand themselves by creating their own content. Just remember your first idea is free, it only gains you leverage for control of your next.

FONGOOL

06-04-2004, 01:11 PM

"how did we get to the point where the creative participants in the endeavor became so devalued"

Because money guys can't quantify "creativity" and the marketing guys reassure them that it doesn't matter...

I'm so bitter... :p

Steve

wacom

06-04-2004, 01:27 PM

Hey if a company wants american taxpayer tax breaks then they should do biz-nez in the US. If they do it somewhere else, they need to get breaks from that country. You can't use our finical infrastucture as a base, and do your work somewhere else.

While it's great for India, I don't want to be paying for it. What about continuing to educate people here? There are millions of interns/students here that would work for free or peanuts- with little or less training. Do you really think if ILM were to open a branch in LA and offer free training in exchange for two to four years of work that people wouldn't line up at the door?

Just a though.

I mean if your work force is 51% in another country you shouldn't be able to clame that your an American company and recieve the benifits of being based in this country. In addition: if you want to be an American company who hires workers for lower pay in other countries you should at least have to follow the pathetic standards set in America for worker saftey, waste treatment etc.

While the best workers getting the best jobs, regardless of the country they live it or were born in, is good, I don't think that's what the bean counters had in mind. My glasses aren't rose colored enough to put a simple happy spin on all of this.

I can't wait for the day when the global economy is flat, and they are paying the people in country X the same as Y. The Indian's will only work for so little for so long- they are'nt stupid people.

I can't wait 'till they outsource the writers and producers though- hollywoods stories are so trivial and mundane and India has some great story tellers.

wacom

06-04-2004, 01:54 PM

Again:

If the films and content in America atually delt with issues central to our country and culture, and not "Micky Mouse" stories, there may be a need for some of these jobs to stay here. It would be helpful for a company to have employees in this case that understand the culture for which they are creating work.

But you can pass a universally bland story, with no social or political issues, around to anyone, anywhere and get results.

I think it's time that many artists in their respective countries take a stand, and start working for people and with people on projects that deal with these issues and topics. There is a market for it and in the end it will produce better work.

I can't wait for the day where a Ballywood producer hires a small group of Indian 3D artists and makes a truly Indian film that amazes the audiences of the world- and has the Hollywood executives scrambling to find what the words content and originality mean. A film where the Indian workers weren't just working for the pay in it, but for the passion they have for the project and its story.

I personally have taken the stance that I'll work for a small indendent film company with a good story for far less than I would a larger studio for these very reasons.

Why do artists like us take such little pay and have to use the managment's system? Because we aren't commited enough to getting our own work show and don't have the determination to stick with complicated projects.

Example:
Do you think he'd have made more money on this if he'd worked for ILM on it?

http://www.kazeghostwarrior.com/

The solution is to disban from the traditional studio structure- cut them off, and form your own way of working either alone or in/with small groups. Cut out the managment fat and save money. Can you imagine if the first blair witch project had some 3D work in it how well off that arist would be?

FONGOOL

06-04-2004, 08:37 PM

Actually, I saw an amusing article on CNN about how Bollywood often outright swipes the stories from OUR films... :D

Not to say that every country's movie industry isn't guilty of it to some extent or another, but it was amusing to see some of the Hindi-fied versions of major American hits, replete with song and dance numbers!

I can't wait for the day when the global economy is flat, and they are paying the people in country X the same as Y. The Indian's will only work for so little for so long- they are'nt stupid people.

The economist in me agrees with this. Hollywood caters to a global market, if Indian/Korean/Chinese audiences shell out cash for the product why not left them get a piece of the creation pie. The region system with DVDs allows the same content to be sold in India cheaper than in the England or North America. So I guess some justification could be made that there is some sort of correlation between wages and the cost of the product consumed. I'm thinking that there might be longer term thinking at play here. Even if wages were some how miraculously equalized I suspect that the jobs would remain were the copyright laws favor the employer.

But you can pass a universally bland story, with no social or political issues, around to anyone, anywhere and get results.

Good point. Mediocrity does lend itself to anonymous mass production. Or they can take the shotgun approach. I remember an article about how "The Simpson's" gets produced overseas. They send the same storyboard/script/audio to six different Korean/ Taiwanese animation studios. Back in the US the best scenes are culled from the finished shows. Local animators fill in the gaps. The person being interviewed gushed about how having the show done six times and throwing away the crap was still cheaper than having it done once here. This producer favored the Taiwanese studios because they "got American humor." The way "The Simpson's" has been going in the last few season I think they must be favoring the Korean studios... not as funny but you can't argue with the spreadsheet.

Can you imagine if the first blair witch project had some 3D work in it how well off that arist would be?

Actually, I read (a recent Newsweek I believe) that the real curse of the Blair Witch is that none of the crew have cash... or careers.

wacom

06-05-2004, 12:29 AM

"Actually, I read (a recent Newsweek I believe) that the real curse of the Blair Witch is that none of the crew have cash... or careers."

Yeah, artists are horrible about knowing thier rights and when to have lawyers look over a contract. I'd never sign on any dotted line worth over a thousand without running it past a lawyer who is trained in handling such things. It's money well spent in the end IMHO.

Makes you think that if artists got at least a little economic and "biz-nez" training we'd all be better off.

thiru

06-05-2004, 02:01 PM

Kindly follow the link below to know about literacy in India

http://cyberjournalist.org.in/census/cenlit0.html

It is 81% for males in urban areas and 76% overall.
India has more than a lakh villages and agriculture dominates there. So low literacy rate in rural areas.

Kindly search for facts before posting.
Can we say americans kill all POWs in prison.

Signal to Noise

06-05-2004, 02:08 PM

My mistake. This is what I was told whilst on a tour to the Taj Mahal. I'm sure 10% was mentioned for something. I must have been day dreaming looking at the Indian landscape from the bus window.;)

Dodgy

06-05-2004, 03:07 PM

Something to bear in mind is that the population of india is over a billion. It could eat all the jobs in the us and europe and still have unemployed....

wacom

06-05-2004, 04:12 PM

Originally posted by thiru
Kindly follow the link below to know about literacy in India

http://cyberjournalist.org.in/census/cenlit0.html

It is 81% for males in urban areas and 76% overall.
India has more than a lakh villages and agriculture dominates there. So low literacy rate in rural areas.

Kindly search for facts before posting.
Can we say americans kill all POWs in prison.

Your quoted statistics don't mention women. Makes me wonder.

Statistics can be scewed...to a degree...
and the more variables you have the more flexablity one has in destorting the information...

DJinNY

06-07-2004, 05:15 AM

Originally posted by Dodgy
Something to bear in mind is that the population of india is over a billion. It could eat all the jobs in the us and europe and still have unemployed....

Yeah really, India needs to be culled or de-populated! At very least, they need to learn about birth control. Dont give Em JOBS--Give em CONDOMS!:D